Know Your Sin
by drama-princess
Summary: There are some sins the priests can't wipe away, and Nini has only just begun to understand the delicate dance of lust and guilt. A short stream-of-conciousness piece.


A/N: This is sort of a rather peculiar drabble from Nini's point of view. I wanted to do some kind of intense stream of consciousness that dealt with Nini in a church. And I was listening to Melissa Etheridge's Angels Would Fall at the same time, and. . . well, this was born. Also gave me the title. At any rate, this particular fic is dedicated to Bohemian Storm. She knows why.   
  
Incidentally, if you flame me about how I have no understanding of capitalization and grammar, you do realize that you will be exposed as a twit that doesn't read author's notes. The style is deliberate, people.   
  
**Know Your Sin  
**by drama-princess  
  
~-~  
  
there were times when she wondered what the hell she was doing.   
  
she sat every other wednesday (he refused sundays) on the hard pews, cursing lust and guilt. a twist of wooden beads in her hands, entwined about thick yellow nails, she nervously fingered out hailing a mother who had disowned her whore-child. the only relief came from sliding her hand in among the layers of organdie petticoat and drawers and finger the dampness against her legs. beads of sweat slid down her skin, rusting half-silver garters and ruining black lace stockings.  
  
he insisted they meet here, and she was always early.   
  
it was as if fucking (even he couldn't call it making love between the two of them) underneath the soft, winsome glow of the stained glass windows would consecrate the act. he clutched  
  
and she whimpered  
  
and took hot handfuls of her dirty black hair into his fine, pampered man-hands, and tried to find another woman in them. and she thrilled in how filthy it was, and how much that this was all she deserved, listening to his quiet grunts over the frenzied murmurs of the churchgoers. _forgive me father for i have sinned.  
  
_he was silent when he peeled off her clothes, and she was always afraid that he would drop her corset on the dusty floor with a single, disgusted look, as if to say you are not the woman i want. but he always shut his eyes, and circled her breast with his kind hand, as if to say _this is not your fault. _she didn't think that but it didn't matter because she'd never had anything like this before. in her whole life.  
  
other men tried, oh, yes, they did. they danced with her as her heels went click-click-click on the hard floor beneath her hands. the other men, they thought they could wrap their scarlet talons around her fresh neck. she smelled the blood on them, and knew that other men broke things, and this man was broken himself. she studied him as he cried out softly above her, his face frozen into a thousand tiny fragments of pain and ecstasy. lust and guilt had betrayed them both. she thought about him, about his hollow cheeks and the way his beard melted into his fine jaw, blurring the boyish charm she craved.   
  
_i have betrayed the woman i hated.  
  
_she hated him and she wanted him and she hated herself for wanting him. other men wanted her, maybe some just as more. one haunted the corridor outside her room but god, oh god, she couldn't stand him. he frightened her, she who had never been scared by a single damn man in her life. he drew his fingers. strong, swift, butterfly fingers. around her neck. he could kill her dead for betraying him.   
  
_baby and johnny  
got into a bad bed  
inside was a man  
who killed his baby dead  
for sleeping with johnny  
in her husband's bed  
  
_so went the old, childish rhyme at the moulin. and she couldn't be faithful to a man like he would demand. he had kissed her, and she'd fled from fear of the music.   
  
she hated that other man and yet she wanted him and she hated _him _for arousing the fear in her gut.   
  
she almost doesn't notice when this wednesday is over so lost is she in thoughts of the other man. the man touches her hair tenderly, his long, lean body stretched out next to her damp, quivering form. this is just like one of those bad stories mome fromage tells.   
  
Nini, I . . . I am sorry, he tells her. _  
  
_he is her confessor and her demon and her angel. and she loves him and she hates him and she will spend the rest of her life next to him because _this is her penance. _ because her mother raised a good catholic girl. because she feels sorry for what she did.  
  
because she knows her sin. who knows why, really?  
  
Shut up, Shakespeare, she says instead.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
-~-  
A/N: Yes, that _was_ Nini/Christian. The author would like to advise all those opposed to the ship to Deal. With. It.  
  



End file.
